Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award Winner Announced
March 24, 2003, San Francisco, Calif. — Writers of Jewish fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from around the United States applied for the new Koret Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award. Now a winner has been selected: Mark Oppenheimer, an essayist and a scholar of American religion trained at Yale University.
An unusually versatile writer of personal essays as well as essays on everyday religious practice, Oppenheimer will be honored at a ceremony at the fifth annual Koret Book Awards in New York on April 7, 2003. His award includes a $25,000 fellowship and three months in residence at Stanford University, where he will teach one course, give workshops, and have time for writing.
Already his work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Yale Review, The American Scholar, The Forward, and Southwest Review. Oppenheimer's book Knocking on Heaven's Door: Religion in the Age of Counterculture is forthcoming from Yale University Press, and another book, At Thirteen — a study of Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies' role in American Jewish culture — is under contract with publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Oppenheimer received his B.A., M.A., and M.Phil. from Yale University, where he expects to be awarded his Ph.D. in religious studies this May. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
"Oppenheimer is a gifted writer whose personal essays show a very complex kind of self-awareness that we associate with a genuine artist," said Morris Dickstein, chair of the panel of judges and distinguished professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. "His work shows the curiosity of an intelligent journalist but also taps into the creative potential of the essay form."
"Jewish writing is, by all accounts, flourishing today, with an array of themes - Holocaust, mysticism, feminism, Israel - prodding it in many different, often surprising directions. We see this award as a way of encouraging some of its more interesting, younger voices," said Steven Zipperstein, director of the Koret Jewish Book Awards and the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. Zipperstein also serves as co-chair of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford.
Applicants for the award had to be 35 years of age or younger, and could not have published more than one book. The new prize is a project of the Foundation's Koret Jewish Book Awards. The Awards recognize the best books on a variety of Jewish themes each year, raising awareness among readers and publishers and promoting Jewish literacy.
The Awards' Advisory Board includes eminent writers and thinkers on Jewish topics: Robert Alter, Jerome Chanes, Robert Chazan, Arthur Green, Paula Hyman, Tony Judt, Berel Lang, Cynthia Ozick, Richard Siegel, and Steven Zipperstein.
About the Koret Foundation
Since 1979, the San Francisco-based Koret Foundation has awarded more than $200 million to innovative initiatives and community projects in the Bay Area and in Israel, focusing on education, community and economic development, and Jewish life and culture. Reflecting the vision of founders Joseph and Stephanie Koret, the Foundation aims to be a catalyst for positive change by building vibrant communities, promoting personal initiative, and encouraging creative thinking. With assets of approximately $300 million, it is one of the largest Jewish-sponsored charitable trusts in the nation.
Contact: Director of Communications, Koret Foundation | tel: 415-882-7740